


Vampire Fiction

by crystalsexarch



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male Miqo'te (Final Fantasy XIV), Male Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Past Violence, Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal Spoilers, Post-Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal, Specific Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), but one joke, i mean there are TWO nipples, one singular nipple joke, well technically four nipples because there are two people but—
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:13:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26145445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalsexarch/pseuds/crystalsexarch
Summary: Major patch 5.3 spoilers...and also major spoilers forThings You Keep to Yourself, since Bas'ir is the WoL I'm using for this one. You don't have to have read it for this to make sense.The Warrior of Light still has some emotional threads to tie up before he can move past the events of Shadowbringers.OH and there are no actual vampires in this. T-technically...
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Original Character(s), G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	Vampire Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> Er...now is the time to make your final bets on what body part(s) Bas'ir has lost along his journey because...you are about to find out. In a non-graphic way. There are also hints at what job he takes up at a certain time.

His body ached for no clear reason, but at least his heart sat right in his chest. “Raha,” Bas’ir said with his head nestled at his lover’s shoulder. Orange glowed through his eyelids and salt water flowed a few ilms beneath his boots. The sun setting over Hingashi was warm on the Keeper’s pale skin, but the man he’d attached himself to was warmer. “You remember those books I used to read when I was young?”

Raha hummed a little laugh. He was watching the unfamiliar ocean, red eyes wide and wondering. “You read many books.”

“The Ishgardian ones. The vampires.”

“Ah...yes.” He slipped his tail around Bas’ir’s hips, felt Bas’ir’s tail twitch at its weight. The pier was quiet, and the stone beneath them chilled. “Your favorites quite often, as I recall.”

The Keeper grumbled and sank a bit deeper into his friend, too tired or too set on his point to pick at the teasing. “That aside. I was wondering whether you're not unlike a vampire yourself now…”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Older than you look. Dangerously charming…”

“By those same metrics, you might pass for a vampire yourself.”

A slight tick of the tail. “Please. If I were a vampire I'd have noticed by now, what with all the biting I've accomplished in my years. And you'd have turned, most certainly.” A small siege of cranes flitted over the horizon. Beneath their song, Raha felt the faintest rumbling from his partner’s throat. A raspy purr. And he held it for a while, anchoring it to his breaths before speaking again. “Besides,” he said, “I’m afraid I look _older_ than I really am.”

“Nonsense. You’re a portrait of youth!”

"Kindly apprise my back of the situation…"

Raha stretched his arms, lingering in a mild yawn, before scooting away from the edge ilm by ilm. “Very well.” Then his lips were at his lover’s nape, light and curving into a crescent smile. Bas’ir leaned back into his orbit, into those loving knuckles, pressuring strategic plots along his spine. Blue tail, red tail whipped like flags in the wind.

Bas’ir tilted his head back and arched against the ministrations. “You’ll have me wilting into the sea ere long…”

“You’ll find my grip formidable.”

“And your reflexes?”

“Faster than they once were.”

“How fortunate for me.” Sounding quite smug, Bas'ir fingered at his scarf until it hugged the skin of his neck, obscuring the tattoos he shared with his love in the process. Bundled, even in an Hingan summer. When he sighed, the frayed fabric danced with his breath. “Well, have you had enough of this place?”

“The pier?”

“Nay, the city as a whole.” He sat up straighter and Raha let his hands hover away. “Some Eorzeans find its culture...a bit hard to digest.”

Raha sneered in private, knowing Bas’ir knew very well how eager the former Exarch was to travel and see all manners of culture, knowing Bas’ir was only distancing himself from the city because he had come to love it so dearly and wanted to protect himself from Raha’s reaction regardless. “It’s fascinating,” he said, meaning it fully. “And I cannot thank you enough for your introduction.”

“There are, of course, sour parts to the region.”

“I especially like this view. The sunset blooming before us like this.” He set his chin on Bas’ir’s shoulder and breathed in the scent of the sea, the subtleties of his Keeper’s cologne. Something deceptively citrusy. Bergamot, or a similar note, always administered discreetly, as though he expected Raha to believethe scent was completely natural. Sooner or later, Raha had his arms around Bas’ir’s waist. “Feeling secure now?”

“Hmm…” Half hum, half purr.

“Shall I rock you with the waves?” Here, the sweeping ambiance of the water was not so rough. The hawkers, the mischief makers, the sightseers of Kugane had plenty of room leftover to fill with sounds of their own. But the Keeper made no sounds. Raha hunkered ever closer, wondering if his love had once again slipped into a pool of static. “Bas’ir?”

His ears perked back and the spell was broken, his voice a whispering patch of color over the white noise of the waves. “I’ll love you forever.”

Raha frowned. “And I’ll love you.”

“I will fall asleep if we linger much longer.” He shook his head so hard one of his ears turned inside out.

Raha fixed it. “...very well”.

“Is it?” He turned his head over his shoulder. The sunset had no shade to match the yellow of his eyes.

“It is.” Raha stood by propping himself up on Bas’ir’s shoulders. “After all, watching you drift off feels a bit like watching a sunset.”

“Very funny…” Bas’ir made a show of lifting himself off the ground, grunting and grimacing with a twinkle of light in his irises. Once righted, he dusted his coat and started for the inner city with gloved hands in his pockets. They’d have to loop around to ferry back to Shirogane. “I was hoping you would join me in rest, early though it may be.”

“I could be persuaded.” Raha followed about a yalm behind. He thought, perhaps, the Warrior’s limp looked more pronounced than it ever had, dragging him a bit too far to the left each step. His dark coat followed the uneven sway of his body, drawing Raha ever forward. With a few quick steps, they were walking abreast, and the Seeker was weaseling his arm around his partner’s.

Bas’ir’s eyes twitched over with muted delight. “Afraid of getting lost?”

Possible retorts cropped up, and Raha chose none of them. Instead, he opened his mouth and laughed like he’d been caught making mischief. The light sound popped out before it had his permission. “I’m simply happy to be at your side.” And he was.

_

They spoke little until they reached Bas’ir’s apartment. He’d bought it long ago and paid to have it furnished. Between oaken ornaments and busy tapestries of silk, it bore few marks of his personality: the contents of a tool box cast over a desk, hats he’d abandoned, an empty bottle of gifted Ishgardian wine. Chicken-scratched notes and letters, some perhaps their writer had meant to toss before having company.

"Not hungry, are you?" Raha worked off his boots, his bracers.

"No, no." As always, Bas’ir started undressing with his scarf. "Just...tired beyond reason."

"I may read a while…" Raha's scarf then, the top layer of his shirt. He started undoing his belt.

"You wouldn't rather…" Now Bas'ir's boots, his trousers, and then finally he picked off his right glove, tossed it into a basket on the dresser, only to get stuck on his left.

Raha, now in smallclothes and a plain undershirt, approached his lover from behind, kissed his neck, and crossed his arms around his waist. "Rather what?"

The warmth purring over his back was what he needed. He shimmied the left glove off his sensationless hand and revealed the metal digits of his fingers. "Would you humor me?” he said, smiling with one side of his mouth. Tonight, he resisted the urge to let his mind linger on the mechanical parts that both were and were not him.

Of course it was always easier with a partner. From then on, they had no trouble helping one another undress.

When Raha laid Bas’ir down with a long kiss, the Keeper asked for something gentle. After that there were no words, not for a long while. Metal clicks punctuated the air of the apartment while the Seeker worked off Bas’ir’s prosthetic, tried his best not to make him wince. He set the sleek mechanical piece on the dresser, atop a battered scarf folded in half, and rejoined its crafter with soft hands at the ready. First, Raha let himself be watched as he leaned in and kissed Bas’ir’s forehead, his neck. Then he traced pale shoulders like he was evaluating another era's relic, looking for signs of injury. Delicately, Raha raised what remained of Bas’ir’s once-dominant arm—he'd been left with a little less than his elbow, and the sum of his operations had left him with a little less than that. Now Raha's fingers whispered where skin met metal, a particular touch developed through trial and error. Here not there, this not that.

Bas'ir closed his eyes and let the other man prime his body. Sensation’s slow crawl across his skin burned out the begging questions so often keeping him awake— _Do I deserve it? Is it real?_ He deflated further into the bed and smiled, let himself be worked to hardness before opening his eyes and guiding Raha’s lips to his, tasting a trace of rice flour and laughing. But it wasn’t enough to draw them apart. Raha’s weight soaked into Bas’ir, who eagerly absorbed it. Two whole bodies, bodying together. Between them, a tiny slice of something eternal. Bas’ir spread his legs and his companion broke the kiss with a grunt, ghosting away to grab the oil from the nightstand.

_Gentle,_ Raha reminded himself, scrunching up his face when he finally pushed himself inside. Bas’ir tensed beneath him and brought his thighs inward, squeezed, hummed. Soon Raha had one hand hooked under a knee, the other tracing the tattoos at his partner’s neck. Only his spiritual age tempered his young body's eagerness. Smiling, Raha hilted himself fully and waited for Bas'ir's mouth to pop open—he wanted to see those fangs—before moving himself back out, back in.

The pace was slow and slower as the minutes waged war around them, toward them, but did not break them. Who was the one who taught Bas'ir patience? Or did he learn it himself waiting for the right shadow to swathe him in brutal, loving darkness? Not the right questions for lovemaking, and besides—Raha could almost feel the answer grasping at his chest with fingers too soft for a Warrior, calling him down to a place where flesh met flesh.

Bas'ir gripped his lover's neck and held. He liked the closeness. He liked being breathed against. He liked how the breaths grew faster, shorter when he hitched his legs around Raha's hips, choking on unborn air every other time his lips parted. And, when he was able to keep his eyes open, he liked spying Raha’s hyper-focused glare of crimson. He liked to see those eyes pointed at his mouth or his collarbone or the tip of his cock, so he’d know that he, too, could be a force of hunger, that he was capable of making a man ravenous.

When he came, Bas’ir hardly made a sound. Just a starry-eyed gasp that led his eyelids down slowly. Cum stringed onto his chest while Raha fought his own need and pressed against his lover’s sweet spot, hissing. The Seeker used to lean back when he was about to finish, but now he let himself fall forward and tense his legs to search for an angle that would let him piston in and out properly, even at the cost of his dignity. It was worth spending.

When he found it, Bas'ir arched his back, realizing he had a bit more leverage to offer. By then, Raha's tail had grown twice in size by bristling. It only lost its tension when he reared out and back in with blood in his ears. He tried to keep himself quiet like his partner, but failed. Raspy, aching sounds accompanied his last round of arrhythmic thrusts. Bas'ir, knees shaking, deflated with a smile. Feeling the full force of that expression, and unable to draw his attention from the fruit of the work he'd put into filling his partner, Raha was well and truly lovesick in the most powerful, most positive way he could fathom.

"What a mess…" Light laughter trickled from the Keeper's mouth. "What manner of portrait am I now?"

Raha grunted and hunkered over, kissed the other man's collarbone, breathed once, twice, thrice upon it before clearing his throat and speaking low. "One of history's finest."

"I would challenge your assessment. Have you remained objective?"

"One cannot root out every trace of bias." He raised himself on his arms and perked his chin high. "Allow me to take a closer look…" In a two-part attack, he swooped down and set his lips at each of Bas'ir's nipples before sitting back up and wiggling his eyebrows with a sly smile.

Bas'ir looked pink, but otherwise happy. "I love you."

"And I love you." He wasn't eager to edge himself out, nor had he gone soft.

"I should say it more."

"I won't complain."

"I should—" Something was different in Bas'ir's tone. It was weaker. Brittle. He cleared his throat. "I should say it more because I should've started saying it much sooner."

Raha lowered his ears and shoulders in time. There was a note he recognized, though it’d been transposed. He was half certain he could still harmonize. "Let me get you cleaned up…"

_

Two silent cups of tea later, Bas’ir was clean and bundled with his love beneath their blankets. Raha’s hand danced over scar tissue and the Keeper quivered closer. They were both on their backs, staring at the dusty fan hanging from the ceiling. “I think,” Bas'ir said, “I have always been terrified of dying. For what reason, I cannot say.” He was barely peeking over the blanket. “You know full well how poorly I’ve wasted the time I’ve been given.”

Raha raised an eyebrow. “Wasted?”

“Wasted my time. And my words. Which I am trying to use more deliberately now. All I mean to say is—” Too fast. He paused and wiped his mouth, his eyes. Needed to choose with care. “I have never before had so much to live for. Not ever. Can you understand why that would heighten my fear of...of what’s to come next?”

Raha softened his gaze and crinkled his lips, thinking he ought to be drawing from a deeper, older tract of his soul. After a long breath, he tapped Bas’ir’s arm and signaled for him to adjust his position, which he did without complaint. Once the Keeper had settled onto Raha’s chest, the next words were ready. “In many ways, you are a star that stands apart from the rest,” Raha said. “But not in this. This fear is one you share with those who would call you ‘the Warrior of Light’ before they call you by your name.”

“Some days I worry that that fear is stronger than I. That I cannot stand against it.”

“Well, you shall never stand alone.” He cupped his ears and petted him, smoothed him out. Raha could feel eyelashes blinking against his chest, quickly at first, then slower until they stopped.

But it wasn’t long before Bas’ir’s head popped up again. “And you,” he said. “I feel inadequate.” He shook his head and closed his eyes tight with sudden anguish, like something had stung him beneath the covers. “Once again, I am _trying_ to use words. To be specific.”

Raha tightened his grip around those pale shoulders. “A valiant effort.”

“I am trying to use words so I can establish that...that I am terrified of leaving _you_ to stand alone someday.” He set his head down and plucked at Raha’s collarbone like he was playing a lute. “With your nature only half understood now...what happens to you as I…? Have you considered whether…?" The words wouldn't be enough. He tried to stuff his pain into a groan muted by the sturdy chest he was lying upon. "I...I won’t be young forever.”

Raha set his jaw and looked forward. His gaze landed on a fake potted plant sitting next to an unlit lantern on the desk. Thick green leaves, all bunched together on a half-hourglass stem. The round pot, covered in shiny blue tiles. The species wasn’t one he recognized. What he _did_ recognize, finally, was a connection he had missed the first time around. He nodded with a grim sigh. “I understand,” he said.

“You understand.” Bas’ir spoke with the energy of an eye roll.

“The vampires.”

Ears flared back, a tail whipped beneath the covers, and one set of fingers pressed with alarm into the Seeker’s chest. Bas’ir had fight in his eyes when he reared his head up, but it faded away fast and gave way to something docile. “I’d rather you not read into it too terribly.”

Raha guided Bas'ir's head back down again and kissed his crown. "My love…"

The Keeper couldn't help but sigh into the sound, even as ugly thoughts grappled with the loosely knitted threads of his sanity. To an extent, he was asking Raha to turn the fight in his favor. And it wasn’t the first time he had done so, nor was it likely to be the last.

"You are asking me to speculate at your peril," the former Exarch continued. "I will not. No longer. You have come too far to dwell in melancholy."

"Help me." He nuzzled his nose along the body beneath him and breathed in his favorite flavor of air. "Help me understand this."

"W-well…" Raha turned his nose up and pondered. "To put it figuratively...I'll not have you turning your tail to the campfire, testing time and time again whether it's hot enough to burn."

On cue, Bas'ir looped his tail around so it sat over Raha's thighs. In his throat, a begrudging murmur grew and fizzled out.

Raha scratched the back of his neck. "Because I can tell you—and I hope you will trust me—that it _is_ hot. And I’ve seen you burned before.”

“I know you’re not saying I should simply accept the inevitability of life’s misfortunes.”

“I’m _saying_...you should not conspire to let yourself suffer them twice.” He flattened his palm and ran it down Bas’ir’s spine, then back up to his hairline, where he delivered a practiced pattern of scratches he knew would please his partner. “There are better ways to keep oneself warm, and I shall ever be keen on demonstrating them.”

“Never liked fire…” The tip of his tail flicked out from under the blanket and beat the beginning of an ancient hymn on the sheets. “But I always loved you.”

Raha smiled and felt a little heat resurfacing in his cheeks.

“Always.” Bas’ir reared up in the bed and reached out to the heavens like an overzealous actor. Soon he was straddling the Seeker, glowing like he’d tamed some wild beast and needed to thump his chest about it. “I cannot even _begin_ to explain how _infuriated_ I was to see a man so unyieldingly _beautiful_! The _nerve_!”

“Worked up, my love?”

He swung his arm over Raha’s head and clenched his fist with gusto. “Why, I drove myself half mad dreaming about you. That you would _dare_ offer a man like me _friendship_? The gods, I thought—how they play dirty tricks on me.”

Raha crossed his arms behind his head and set one ankle over the other. As a stage for this impromptu performer, he was comfortable.

“But now—” The Keeper pressed his forehead to Raha’s and flicked his thumb from his chest to his chin. “The joke is on them.”

“And _you_ are on _me_.”

“Indeed.” With a lucky thief’s grin on his face, he flopped back onto his side and entangled himself with his lover anew. Tails, legs, and all vining around all else. Bas’ir’s head ended up tucked beneath Raha’s chin. “And now I’m not.”

“Are you truly tired?”

“Well—”

“Because whether we are to sleep or not...”

“Perhaps we are not.” His blue voice carried his pout. “Perhaps we’ll whisper sweet nothings at one another until the sun rises.”

“I am amenable to this.” Raha edged back just enough to squeeze a hand between them. He traced the scar beneath Bas’ir’s eye and admired his long, dark lashes. Inside this man brewed a legacy of pain and perseverance. In times past, he had been much louder about his suffering. And now, Raha hoped, he would be loud about his joy as well.

“Very well. Ahem.” Bas'ir wiggled his head so he could gaze at his lover. “You, my good sir, have a _fine_ —”

Raha kissed him instead. And they kissed for a very long time. And this time there was no pretending.

**Author's Note:**

> Willing to bet that deep down...somewhere deep in your core...you didn't believe I would give this piece a happy ending.
> 
> Find me on Twitter @crystalsexarch


End file.
